Quid Pro Quo
by Sky Samuelle
Summary: After the film. Just when you think it's over.... vengeance is the sweeter dish
1. Default Chapter

_After the events of the film__ ' Cruel Intentions ' . Just when you think it's over , it's begun. _

**Quid Pro Quo**

Katryn Merteuil has never believed in nothing but herself, but now, exactly one year after the death of her stepbrother Sebastian Valmont, even this last, thin belief can be faltering.

It's been one whole year spent in stifling confinement : the first half inside the Methadone Clinic , and in this hellhole of catholic Swiss boarding school after that .

Her sweet Mother wouldn't let coming back to Manhattan so soon after the scandal and, of course, if it was for purely selfless reasons Tiffany had forced her to exchange a prison for another.

Poor unstable Kathryn couldn't afford to undermine her recovery with precocious exposure to temptations, isn't?

Katherine has hated and hates every minute, every fucking second of her permanence there.

Other girls don't talk her and at the refectory she eats by herself.

She remembers very clearly her first day, when the nuns had informed the other students about her vicious habits, inviting them publicly to report in any her wrong step and to not get familiar with her.

When she walks alone in the Hallways , Katryn ignores the whispers behind her back , silently meditating revenge.

When she isn't studying, she prays in Chapel under the nuns' watchful eyes.

And when she looks at herself in the mirror, there's no trace of graceful and angelic character she has consumed herself building.

In her place stands a stranger with empty hazel eyes and spent skin. No form of make up or simple vanity is allowed to her there.

She 's more lucid now than she's never been : no sniff of coke will numb the sensation of encompassing cold invading her, helping her to forget that she loves nobody and nobody loves her.

She has not the money necessary to corrupt anybody: her dearest mother hardly pays her monthly expensive rent.

All what she can do to bring herself pleasure is imagining ways to pay Annette Hardgrove back .

She hates Annette with a vehemence surprising the rational part of her mind, enough to find even only her name worthy of spite . It's , after all, because of Annette if Katherine has lost everything.

But there's something else worrying the young Merteuil lately: it's been only one year and she can't remember the sound of the Sebastian 's voice .

Recalling it to mind used to be an exercise of memory, but now she can't anymore hear it in her head like once. The memory of his death has never abandoned her, supposedly because she has not had any distractions to help .

Sebastian Valmont is possibly the only creature, male or female, she has never loved in her life. In him she has seen an equal and a rival, recognizing in his smile , in his gestures something of herself.

Humorous, how she has never been able to feel tenderness toward anybody else, not even herself.

She has always lived with the impulse to burn and twist anything was around her to enough time, and often when she showered , the impulse to scratch her too soft flesh until her manicured nails drew blood was almost too strong.

Beauty angered her because it was a disguise of monsters and nightmares.

Yet Sebastian had never disgusted Katryn quite in the way most of things and people did. Rather, he possessed and emanated a vital energy that she envied.

She has wanted punish him for abandoning her, has manipulated him to degrade his power over her, yet without him she's finally alone.

Sebastian was her private toy, one all more enjoyable for his utter unpredictability.

But he is gone now and soon she will not able to remember correctly the features of his face.

The eventuality scares her on a subconscious level, and it's difficult for her knowing him extinguished from this world. She favours imaging him as he laughs of her misery, appreciating the irony of his victory from the grave.

Kathryn does not compare her love for Sebastian with the Annette's one. Give her enough time and the other girl will turn him into idol, an idealized memento of a first lover, painting again and again his image until it will become too delicate and heroic to be real .

For Kathryn it will be been different , because he has tainted more than the volatile thing commonly called heart . She'll remember him as the devious bastard he was and yet nobody else will quite measure up to his shadow.

Today, miss Merteuil is smoothly pretending to read the Bible to linger half-hour more in the inner cortile of the convent . Her eyes stay focused on the page as she hears light steps coming closer from behind . She ignores the rumour until they stop right at her shoulders . Slowly, she turns and bestows a submissive, sickly sweet smile on the nun, inwardly cursing her with names that would make pale the devil himself and taking great pleasure from it.

" Good morning, Sister Marie "

The older woman doesn't smile back or return the greeting, but simply urges to receive a visitor.

Her first visitor of the year. A peculiar event.

After, Sister Agnes escorts Katryn until the convent's gate - which it's located in open campaign - and opens it for her, indicating a car outside.

Kathryn Merteuil has seen too times that Jaguar to not recognizing it instantly as her step-brother's more valued possession. And there's only a person who could be driving it now: Miss Seventeen. The damned Kansas goldilocks Annette.

But when the heavy gate is closed behind her, the calm , suadent voice calling her doesn't belong to Annette.

" Hello Kat "

She turns like if she has just received a punch in the gut. With his back leaning on the wall and a smug grin on his face, is Sebastian Valmont.

Kathryn can literally feel the blood draining from her face and her feet growing cold.

She blinks, but the apparition doesn't vanish .

It can't be.

" You look horrible "

The apparition says, looking her appreciatively up and down .

" You are dead "- she protests, almost like if the futile affirmation could force the world to make sense again.

Cold sweat prickles her spine and she wants scream the absurdity of all this. She doesn't believe in vengeful souls coming back from Hell or Heaven more than she does in her madness.

But she can't move or talk while her wide open eyes take in the sight of a boy deceased one year ago. Dressed in a black Trussardi suit.

She used to admire the Sebastian's natural elegance and his bearing.

She liked how ornamental he looked at her side when they walked together .

Her hallucination sneers and its lips sear a pleased smile " Apparently that rumour is been greatly exaggerated "


	2. Chapter 2

" You are dead "- she protests, almost like if the futile affirmation could force the world to make sense again.

Cold sweat prickles her spine and she wants scream the absurdity of all this. She doesn't believe in vengeful souls coming back from Hell or Heaven more than she does in her madness.

But she can't move or talk while her wide open eyes take in the sight of a boy deceased one year ago. Dressed in a black Trussardi suit.

She used to admire the Sebastian's natural elegance and his bearing.

She liked how ornamental he looked at her side when they walked together .

Her hallucination sneers and its lips sear a pleased smile " Apparently that rumour is been greatly exaggerated "

**2**

" No "

Kathryn opposes the fog enveloping her senses, refusing a such loss of grip on reality. It's unacceptable.

Yet she hears her voice breaking and feels the pain of her throat in pronouncing one single word. For the first time, the hallucination parts from the wall and walks around her like a vulture, taking few, measured steps and as he does his eyes never leave hers.

Kathryn notices he-- It has a limp.

He… It looks very amused and this irritates her.

" I confess I'm very curious – It says- How does it feel being completely, utterly destroyed ? "

"What? " she squeaks. Her grip on anything is lost

"It must be very hard… losing all what you worked on for a lifetime, seeing it vanish in a moment. It must be a real torment! "

There's more than just a touch of mockery there. It pushes her over the edge, throwing her in an authentic temper tantrum.

" YOU – she screams pointing her index finger to him- are six feet under hearth! You are dead! "

Sebastian Valmont – or any terribly accurate copy of him – laughs, but there's no warmth in the sound musically echoing within the empty space around them.

" O my. You were never so judgmental, Kathryn. Remember you never saw a body "

It's true. She had chosen to not look inside the casket. Not once. Sebastian for her was always been an excess and it would be been a shame ruining that imagine remembering him in the moment of the extreme privation.

" No " She shakes her head violently, deciding this can't be true.

He seems to comprehend the necessity of winning her reason before telling all what he came for.

When he talks her again, his tone is levelled, like if he was addressing himself at a small child:

" It was a bit too much perfect the way everything crashed down on you after my fatal accident, wasn't ? The Annette's revenge, your estrangement from high society crowd, your imposed retirement there. Nothing of it would be been possible if I was been alive "

He pauses, taking a mental picture of her frozen, upset face.

" I never died. When I woke up in hospital, after the accident, all what I could think of was how you had stabbed me in the back. Annette had my diary and if anything drastic would have happened… I could imagine the consequences. Of course, she would not help if she had known the truth, so she was in the dark until after the funeral. But Blaine has gladly assisted me with the rest. "

He doesn't mention what threats he has used to persuade his father to let it be- although they can easily be guessed by anybody is familiar with his extracurricular activities - or how indifferent her mother was been once the big scene was accomplished.

Or how he had meant making the joke to last for six months, but his recovery had slowed him.

It isn't necessary.

Kathryn is livid, pale and still. Only her small hands, closed in fists, tremble violently.

Her hearth – the one she has made anything to destroy or anesthetize, swells with grief, hatred and pure pain.

Suddenly, with uncanny rapidity for someone so angry, she's on Sebastian, plummeting his chest with her firsts, sputtering insults a bit too obscene even for her mouth.

Although she's pretty strong and her attack unexpected , Sebastian blocks her with relative easiness. She begins kicking him furiously then.

He's forced to immobilize her with her back against his car.

It's a difficult task and when it's over they both fatigue to breath. During the fight, the Kathryn's face is ended against the Sebastian' s arm . As she open her mouth for air, her nose brushes the fabric of jacket. It smells lightly of smoke and bears a faint, barely perceivable trace of man's perfume .

It's the smell, so common in its familiarity, what frays her nerves.

" I hate you - I hate you - I hate you -" Kathryn repeats those words like a mantra, whishing they could be true.

He lets go her weakened body as she sobs against him, and she feels the soothing touch of his hands in her hair just before hearing her lips whispering close her ear : "Quid pro quo, Sis "


	3. chapter3

**3**

She doesn't hate herself for crying in his harms, for being weak under his eyes, although she has spent whole her life building barricades against any kind of pain physical or emotional.

It's her only expression of life in months.

"Next time, you will remember I'm not your plaything. Wars between us take nowhere"

He sounds colder than she did when threw in his face her success in manipulating him, but he doesn't really feel any guilt. He did what he had to do. Kathryn has forced his hand and he has destroyed her right back before she could destroy him. Their history is full of hasty paybacks like this one - higher is the offence, the higher the price.

His hands hold on their grip on her forearms with bruising violence as his gaze is transpires undisguised triumph. He is trying to make a point.

Kathryn is anything but stupid. She sees he's right, that they know each other too well to draw this war out without risking mutual annihilation.

Rather than admitting openly anything of this, she licks his lips until Sebastian doesn't allow her to take the kiss further, in a perfect sample of passive-aggressive behaviour.

For once, Kathryn doesn't smother the feeling, but rushes in it with a new sort of crude anticipation.

She wants and likes this friction, the fixation from which it's born. She doesn't want to deny it more than she is willing to let her stepbrother forget it or kill it.

When he used to touch her, even barely, it felt always different. Warm. Personal.

Like if it was more than two different shreds of skin making contact.

For once, Sebastian must not strive to hold on a sensation, because Kathryn squeezes out of him all what she can and he encourages her. While they kiss, they find and asphyxiate each other with the same intensity.

After, she levels on her hands to put distance between them. She flicks her tongue over her lips and smiles self-awarely as she offers a truce :

"I'll call us even this time . For the sake of a well done job"

She is proud of not sounding too pitiful while she says it, but almost sarcastic, a little bit threatening. The guilt and the nostalgia she has felt over his assumed death can't be so easily vanquished.

She'll work on it. Later .

Some secret, liquid pleasure shows through her reddened eyes, and he comprehends how delicate is this moment: here and now, there's a chance for either restoring the balance of power or breaking the hell loose.

Sebastian grins without modesty, bringing the Kathryn's mind back to other times, other schemes, other games of power and lust .

" I'll take it like a compliment."

While she thinks he should and he probably knows it, Kathryn slips her small hand inside the pocket of his jacket, her fingers lingering on the luxurious texture of the fine fabric. At last she finds what she was looking for, and swiftly takes out a packet of cigarettes, slowly getting away from her captor.

Sebastian lights her up a cigarette, then does the same for himself.

She observes him as he does. He looks exactly like he did before, which shouldn't surprise her but it's oddly comforting.

She remembers he used to spy on her while she slept. Sometimes she would get awake and find him there, in her bedroom, towering over her bed with an expression of careful concentration.

She always got angry at him for this , completely freaked out at the very concept of someone who could catch …. What? She still didn't know it.

He didn't use to sleep very much, like if he had too much energy inside him to surrender to the stillness of night.

He liked reading poetry, the slow way. Sometimes he read for her raw verses of decadent poets where they both seemed to find a sense of themselves.

Somewhere between their high society games and the sexual foreplay, over the years they had developed their spicy domestic routines. After all, it mostly the two of them, since their parents hardly spent much time at home.

Those images ran before her hazel eyes like snapshots from an old black and white French film.

The insolently pleasant features of his face, his short blonde hair reflecting the rays of morning ' sun, his blue eyes twinkling with irony. The shape of his hands.

Those details penetrate inside her with alluring rapidity.

She looks away before he can notice of her, but she already feels vulnerable and lost not any less than before he waltzed back into her existence.

She inhales deeply the strong, heavy stink of tobacco, throwing back her head with her lids lowered.

"So, why isn't your fairy blonde shepherd here to share your victory? "

Honestly, she would expect to see Miss Vapidity surgically attached at his arm. Proving exactly how much the girl was a natural blonde.

" Annette has nothing to do with this "

He says without inflection, but she recognizes the determination under the utter lack of emotion.

Thousand possible insults dance their way across her mouth, but she finally chooses to ignore the provocation.

She stands in silence until he adds , offhandedly : " I'm over with her"

Kathryn forces her gaze on the cigarette he holds between his fingers. She feels almost physically his eyes on her face, studying her reaction without trace of amusement.

She has to wonder if he is over her. Would it even matter?

She could reply she has heard that line before, but bringing up that particular conversation would be not convenient.

"My sympathies "

Now, he is quite disappointed. The sarcasm is there, but he was expecting something of a bit more profane.

" Did she throw herself down a bridge, afterwards?"

Ah, this is more like it - a sickly sweet feeling of familiarity almost sweeps him over.

"Nothing of so dramatic, really. One kiss and goodbye."

Leaning with their backs on his car parked in the middle of nowhere, two figures slowly taking in every drag of smoke, his elegance making a striking contrast to her slight slovenliness , Sebastian and Kathryn make a picturesque sight.

Staring emptily ahead, Sebastian realizes it hurts now thinking of Annette. He has loved her deeply, for being all what he thought to be genuinely inexistent : compassionate, uncaring about her attractive appearance, fresh and innocent in her hearth. For being stayed at his side even after having known he has used her twice for his purposes. He has loved her, and still does, for teaching him about tenderness and compassion . He owes her his newfound capacity of forgiving.

He cherishes Annette like a child does a fairy tale.

Sebastian has strongly hoped she could save him from himself but knows too well he can't become the man she wants. There are too many things she doesn't see about him and he doesn't really wants to explain her, even if he could.

He's grown up hating the sensation of being ignored, and has spent most of his young life living with the necessity- almost the compulsion - of proving his existence in this world with stunts more and more impressive.

He hasn't a very high opinion of this world, to say the truth: people suck, life sucks even more and friends are often only enemies who stab you on the backwards. He has thought in those terms for longer than he can remember and Annette won't change it.

Exposure to him has already tainted her spirit enough, and he can stand living without her better than he would stand seeing as she changes in another embittered soul because of him .

He didn't joke when he told her she was meant to fly while he looked up to her chained by the ground.


	4. Chapter 4

**4**

Sebastian glances back to Kathryn and compares the girl he sees now with the image of her etched in his brain.

Kathryn Merteuil, the Sanctified Whore: always impeccably dressed according latest fashion, never a single hair out of place , nails perfectly shaped, perfectly chipped, perfectly painted. With a perfect make up for every attire. Flawless perfection on the outside to disguise the disquieting desolation on the inside… a candy glittery wrapping which conceals a reality deceptive like a carnivore plant hidden in a greenhouse of orchids.

About the emotional massacres they detachedly organized, Sebastian enjoyed the challenge- Kathryn enjoyed the outcome. In a way, he admired her single-mindedness, her resilience in taking out on the entire universe any and every original sin had caused her inner distaste for life, the all-encompassing misery she would never admit she felt.

While he takes in her ruffled brown hair, clean face and oversized clothing, Sebastian thinks the underlying substance isn't very different.

In the most darkly possessive and obsessive way possible, he loves her, just like she loves him.

Sebastian as he's today is a Kathryn's creation every bit as she's his; from the day they have met they have started moulding each other, making their way to who they are today, placing themselves- together- above anybody and anything . So above the rest than weakness wasn't their thing, so above than the delirium of omnipotence was addictive.

Pain?

It was a familiar distraction- they could overcome it. Even better, they could deliver it.

Love?

They no longer needed or desired it. They laughed of the mirage it represented . Fuck, they laughed even harder when they could ridicule others throughout it.

Rules?

They created them, they bend them, they nullified them, they found the most elaborated ways around them. Where their fervid imagination failed, dollars succeeded.

Money?

Never a problem, always a valid mean.

Power?

They had a lot of it, and sought for more. 'Enough' was a word invented for inept ones, it was been taught to them far too soon.

Their bond feeds on suffering and joy alike –it could devour them as well if it would serve its survival, almost like if it owns an independent life.

" Come on, Deadboy, drive me somewhere … luxurious. I want a proper shower "

…And just when he is starting to wax philosophical, the Kathryn's imperious command breaks ungraciously his reverie.

His stepsister climbs in his car, looking up to his still stance with eyebrows raised in obvious annoyance.

If some things are meant to be constants, even in the face of adverse circumstances, the Merteuil trademark Me-Queen,You-Brute attitude is among those.

He eventually takes his place and ignites the motors, speeding up right way and smirking at the undignified sound escaping her mouth as she bends forward.

Kathryn straightens and leans comfortably back against the leather seat and while wind hits her face and the countryside rushes by them, she should probably feel defeated, betrayed, or angry.

But leaving everything behind makes her to feel like a fucking Goddess. Perhaps it's the adrenaline from their previous confrontation, draining her and yet breathing life back into her over-sensitized limbs .

Wiping rebel russet locks away from her indecorously _clean_ face, she ends up casually to glance at her travelling companion.

His profile has a cutting beauty as he smirks.

Stupid arrogant bastard. She would show him! She would find a way, a way to do to him what he has done to her . A way to make him to think that never again he will be able to breath without her at his side.

**END**


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